Transformers Collection

Mark Wahlberg

Peter Cullen

Stanley Tucci

Kelsey Grammer

Nicola Peltz Beckham

Jack Reynor

Frank Welker

Sophia Myles

Li Bingbing

Titus Welliver

John Goodman

Ken Watanabe

John DiMaggio

Mark Ryan

T.J. Miller

James Bachman

Thomas Lennon

Charles Parnell

Erika Fong

Han Geng

Michael Christopher Collins

Zou Shiming

Richard Riehle

Patrick Bristow

Cleo King

Calvin Wimmer

Glenn Keogh

David Midthunder

Richard Gallion

Nick Horst

Kassem Gharaibeh

Edward T. Welburn

Yanis Kalnins

Peter A Kelly

Jessica Gomes

Andreas Beckett

Alexander Leeb

Jamison Haase

Drew Wicks

Gene Shieh

Woei Bee

Wang Ying

William Wang

Melanie Specht

Abigail Klein

Greg Matthew Anderson

Austin Lin

Victoria Summer

Kevin Covais

B. Adam Baillio

Mikal Vega

Andrew Arrabito

Tyrone Smith

Kenny Sheard

Kevin Kent

Michael Wong

Winston Yeh Ying-Wen

Ray Lui

Candice Zhao

Li Jun Ting

Howard Y. Woo

Jingsheng Yu

Ben Wang

Eddie San Chan

Zhang Tianyu

Wu Gang

Teresa Daley

Robert Foxworth

Reno Wilson

Michael Bay

Ben Schwartz

John Wakefield

Ehren Kruger

Fran Williams

Travis Wong

Bryon Weiss

Nico Woulard

David Wald

Kyle Woods

Garrett Warren

Jim Wilkey

Joe Nin Williams

Amber Whelan

Tony Vo

Webster P. Whinery Jr.

Matthew Taylor

Paul E. Short

Dave Macomber

Jeff Schwan

Philip Tan

Daniel Stevens

Mic Rodgers

Larry Rippenkroeger

Natalie Padilla

Dave Tommasi

Don Thai Theerathada

Alex Schoenauer

Spencer Sano

Kevin Alexander Michaels

Matt Totty

Jen Sung

Sam Situmorang

Phi-Long Nguyen

Rich Rutherford

Ming Qiu

Tarah Paige

Rex Reddick

Eric VanArsdale

David Rowden

Randy Peters

Tara Macken

J.J. Perry

Pak Ho-Sung

Luis Moco

Brittany Romatowski

Sam Medina

Mike Majesky

Sam Looc

Scott Lewis

Luci Romberg

Justin Riemer

Charlie Parrish

Sera Trimble

Chris Palermo

Dan Mast

Mike Mukatis

Chris Morena

Carrick O'Quinn

Andrew Mew

Danton Mew

Cole S. McKay

Antony Matos

Sli Lewis

Laura King

Mindy Kelly

Thomas DuPont

Corey Michael Eubanks

Joe Dryden

Michael Ortiz

Kurt D. Lott

Grant Koo

Matthew Moss

Jane Oshita

Don Lee

Dan Latham

Jake Huang

Richard King

Dean Grimes

Master Lee

Danny Le Boyer

Efka Kvaraciejus

Allen Jo

Yee Man Law

Bruce Law Lai-Yin

Logan Holladay

Kiralee Hayashi

Cheryl Wheeler Duncan

John Galindez

Theo Kypri

Chick Bernhard

Dan Lemieux

Josh Lakatos

Zach Hudson

Craig Gubert

Science Fiction

Action

Adventure

Transformers: Age of Extinction

di Bonaventura Pictures

DeSanto/Murphy Productions

Ian Bryce Productions

Paramount Pictures

Hasbro

United States of America

Grant English

Is there any excuse available that will justify spending 2 hours, 45 minutes to watch this film?  Or why I am gifting it three stars?

It was a free rental at Redox.
I normally enjoy Mark Wahlberg movies.
I love Bumblebee.  

Do any of these hold water?

I know one thing that doesn’t hold a lot of water – the story. Does it really matter at this point in the franchise? There are good guy Transformers called Autobots and bad guy Transformers called Decepticons and standing between them are stupid humans that betray their species for profit – normally it’s the U.S. Government. BUT wait – there is one hero that will change all of this and talk Optimus Prime (Autobot Boss Daddy) into fighting one last battle (for the fourth or fifth time – I’ve lost count at this point) while some hot-looking woman runs around explosions in short-shorts.

You now know all you need to know about the entire _Transformer_ franchise.

For this incarnation we trade out Shia LeBeouf for Mark Wahlberg and Courtney Fox for Nicola Pelz. And now for the twist…wait for it… Mark Wahlberg plays Nicola Pelz’s FATHER.  That’s right – the FATHER. Yeah, it totally doesn’t work. At all.

There’s a point in the movie about 90 minutes in where it looks like all the loose ends are going to get tied up and I thought:  You know, that wasn’t so bad. Good action flick, a bit hoaky at points but watchable.

And then the movie keeps going. And going. For another 90 minutes. And you basically watch the movie again except instead of it being in Texas and Chicago, it’s in China and Hong Kong.

It’s too long, too many explosions, too many American flags and Texas flags in the background. This movie desperately needs an editor or it needs to be euthanized. Probably the latter.

John Goodman and Ken Watanabe lend their voices serve as decent comic relief but there’s not a lot that can save this film.  Bumblebee deserved better.

CinemaSerf

I guess even Michael Bay must have realised that by the fourth outing, this franchise needed refreshing. To that end, the previously long-suffering cast have been allowed to hang up their screwdrivers and a new set of characters have been drafted in. They are led by "Cade" (an enthusiastic Mark Wahlberg). Now he just happens to buy an old truck and it just happens to turn out to be the long lost "Optimus Prime". Of course, there are still agencies hunting for the robots and soon he and daughter "Tessa" (Nicola Peltz Beckham) are on the run from a militia controlled by the manipulative industrialist "Joyce" (Stanley Tucci). Quite why it needs to take 2¾ hours to get to the standard denouement is anyone's guess. Despite the inclusion of some Tyrannosaur-bots, the film has the same relentless predictability as the "Autobots" and "Decepticons" (if you can spot the difference) go through the same repetitively staged combat scenes before an ending that relies unduly on human intervention (oh yes, and lots of sentimentality too) before we essentially start back at square one with the usual "Optimus" monologue concluding the proceedings. This has the added benefit of a truly terrible performance from the always over-rated Kelsey Grammer who had a few, entirely futile, goes at being a cinema baddie and unlike the other films which had a semblance of internationalism to them, this is now an entirely American affair that just bored me. Surely no more...?

<em>'Transformers: Age of Extinction'</em>... what the hell happened here?! I actually seriously enjoyed a movie from this franchise, I'm honestly flabbergasted. It's written, directed and produced by the same people, though I wouldn't have predicted that whilst watching.

This, to me, felt almost entirely different to the preceding films in the series, despite the aforementioned. The opening 45-60 minutes are especially entertaining, it does wobble in that regard once or twice but when all is said and done I actually had a lot of fun with this!

I was, for the first time, actually invested into not just the robots but also the human characters too. It's a new bunch on the latter side and, despite minimally liking Shia LaBeouf & friends, I found this lot to be a big upgrade - the change also made it feel fresh. Mark Wahlberg is great as lead, Stanley Tucci and T.J. Miller (for once) are pluses as well.

Nicola Peltz and Jack Reynor are the weakest members of those onscreen, though even then I was still marginally interested in them. Kelsey Grammer, despite playing a fairly standard antagonist, is good, as is Li Bingbing in a relatively smaller role. Peter Cullen, John Goodman and Ken Watanabe, meanwhile, impress with their voices.

Upon starting this review, and still now, I was struggling to come up with negatives. I guess the near three-hour run time truly ought to be one, yet somehow it really... isn't, rather unexplainably. As for a criticism, the excessive product placement is all I've got, I'm afraid.

I'm yet to see the reception that this got, as usual I'm hoping my thoughts are not an outlier in a sea of dissatisfaction. I'd guess it's rated as mid-ly as the prior installments, at worst. Not that any of this is all that important of course, because I enjoyed it and that's all that matters. I did not expect to be saying that, at all!

*checks reception*: Welp. An outlier I seemingly am. Then again, 12k (on Letterboxd) others agree with my rating (and it incredibly again made a billion on the big screen, I see) so I guess it isn't as bad as it looks. Some uncertainty has crept into my mind, I'm thinking it over and comparing it with other films I've rated similarly and... it's not even in doubt. Wild.

Transformers: Age of Extinction

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